An alkaline dry battery (alkaline manganese dry battery) is widely used because it has a large capacity, and a large electric current can be taken out therefrom. A positive electrode of an alkaline dry battery is composed of a pellet including manganese dioxide powder as a positive electrode active material and graphite powder as a conductive agent. In view of increasing a capacity, it is considered to be advantageous to increase a density of manganese dioxide in the positive electrode. However, manganese dioxide expands at the time of discharging, so that the entire positive electrode expands.
Patent Literature (PTL) 1 proposes that a density of graphite in a positive electrode material is adjusted in order to suppress increase in a dimension of an outer diameter of a battery after discharging while a high capacity is secured. In PTL 1, stress caused by expansion of manganese dioxide is allowed to diffuse by adjusting the density of graphite to a specific range.